Differential expression analysis of CCDC107 and RMRP lncRNA as potential biomarkers in colorectal cancer diagnosis

Abstract

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been found to be correlated with different cell biological processes and progression of various types of cancers including colorectal cancer (CRC). CRC is one of the most widespread cancers, thus, introducing new methods or biomarkers for its early diagnosis are desirable. The Crucial role of RMRP lncRNA and its nearby gene, CCDC107, has been shown in numerous types of malignancies. The current study aims to compare expression of CCDC107 and RMRP in CRC and its adjacent normal tissues. For this study, RT-qPCR was applied to evaluate the expression level of candidate gene and lncRNA in 72 CRC cases. ROC curve was plotted to examine the diagnostic capacity. Additionally, for more supporting data, The Cancer Gene Atlas (TCGA, Firehose Legacy) dataset hosted by the cBioportal server and GEPIA online database were enrolled to investigate the effect of both genes expression level on clinicopathological parameters. We observed expression of CCDC107 was significantly down-regulated in the patients group (p < 0.05) which was associated with poor disease-free survival, friction genome alteration and surgical margin status. In contrast, RMRP expression was not significantly altered in CRC versus normal tissues. ROC curve analysis revealed that the area under the curve (AUC) for CCDC107 and RMRP were 0.871 and 0.5, respectively. Additionally, expression of these two genes did not change significantly in different stages of the disease. In conclusion, CCDC107 significantly decreased in colorectal tumor samples and can be considered as a biomarker for diagnostic aims in CRC, but not RMRP.